Payload
• Victoria Woodburn
Stoke Space has completed the initial closing of a roughly $1 billion Series E round, bringing total capital raised to $2.3 billion. The funding will support the first launch of its fully reusable Nova vehicle and development of a larger rocket designed for higher-payload missions.
Commercial Space
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Pivotal Research initiated coverage of SpaceX with a buy rating, arguing the company can overcome Starship’s reusability bottleneck. The firm sees a successful solution potentially supporting Starlink’s expansion into part of the $1.7 trillion terrestrial and wireless communications market, while failure could leave SpaceX smaller than expected.
SpaceX’s shares have traded within a narrow range, but the company could receive a buying boost when the Nasdaq-100 undergoes its quarterly rebalancing later this month. The potential increase in index weighting would prompt additional demand from funds tracking the benchmark.
Hydrosat and Kazakhstan’s JSC “NC “KGS” have established a framework to assess a dedicated thermal-infrared satellite constellation. The proposed capability would focus on supporting water-security needs across Central Asia, though the announcement does not specify a development timeline, funding structure or constellation size.
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Stoke Space has completed the initial closing of a roughly $1 billion Series E round, bringing total capital raised to $2.3 billion. The funding will support the first launch of its fully reusable Nova vehicle and development of a larger rocket designed for higher-payload missions.
Europe’s biggest mobile carriers are in early discussions about forming a consortium to bid for satellite spectrum and deliver direct-to-mobile connectivity. The initiative could create a regionally coordinated competitor to Starlink’s satellite-to-phone service, linking terrestrial telecom networks with space-based capacity.
Stratolaunch’s massive unmanned carrier aircraft has returned to Long Beach Airport nearly six years after its public unveiling. The aircraft was originally designed to carry rockets aloft and support small-satellite launches, offering an alternative air-launch platform for commercial space missions.
The U.S. Space Force is investing $50 million in a startup developing a new method to dispatch small spacecraft from a larger vehicle in orbit. The effort could introduce another approach to moving and deploying satellites after launch, with potential implications for future military space operations.
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Project-S has emerged from stealth with plans to develop a European space safety layer. The initiative adds a new entrant to efforts focused on improving safety in the increasingly complex space environment, with its ambitions spanning technical and potentially political dimensions of Europe’s space sector.
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